How I Proposed Marriage to My Filipina Wife

Even many years before I got married I wondered how I would propose to a woman if it got that far. I had seen some elaborate proposals that seemed to get more bizarre all the time. Being underwater, jumping out of a plane, some kind of method apparently trying to be unique. As a sports fan I am aware of the proposals at ball games, sometimes that are on television. I have to assume the men were absolutely sure the woman would accept their proposal, or they were trying to overwhelm her with the proposal so she would be unable to say no.

Please share your proposal experience with your wife if you want to, in the comments section. I absolutely did not want to do something wild and I did not want to put her on the spot, making her uncomfortable. I didn’t consider myself as someone who would be able to be very creative with a proposal, I just didn’t know how I would do this. No one wants to get rejected either. Here is how I decided the time was right. I met her in person for the first time on April 25 of 2015 and we were going to meet one of her sisters in the Philippines the next day. It is possible I had let her see the ring before proposing to her and I felt like I should propose the next day, but I still had no idea how. While at her sister’s house, my back began to flair up. I had never spent so much time on a plane before and didn’t bring any pain pills and I was starting to struggle.

I spent a lot of time on the planes standing. We were eating lunch in the kitchen and I had been squirming around in my seat, getting up to stand, and finally broke down and told her that I was in a lot of pain. My wife said she would get something to rub on my back and that I could lie down on her sister’s bed in her bedroom. She got me laid down in the bed, probably set up a fan nearby, and rubbed this stuff into my sore back. She probably even stayed there with me for a while. As I lay there, it dawned on me that this was going to be part of my proposal. After awhile I got up out of the bed and if I remember correctly, my wife and I were talking to her sister, and were about to leave her house. I told my wife that before we left, I had something to tell her. She likely suspected what was coming up next. I told my wife that I wanted to propose to her but didn’t know how or when.

I had come to the Philippines for the purpose of marrying her in a couple of weeks. As I lay in that bed with her rubbing that ointment in my back, trying to make me as comfortable as possible, I realized that this was the type of caring woman I wanted in my life. I probably struggled to get those words out. The proposal seemed to come out in slow motion. I asked her if she would marry me, and she said yes and now you know the rest of the story. It was cool that I was able to do it in her sister’s place. We had planned on going to her house again on our recent trip to the Philippines but plans changed but wow, that would have been something to be there again. Perhaps in the future we will. If you are interested in marrying a Filipina, at some point you’ll need to get around to asking her.

My advice is to: Don’t overdo it/Do tell her why you love her/Don’t put her on the spot. Love Beyond The Sea is to help foreigners know how to have a good marriage to a Filipina. Because it is “different”, you could be nervous about how to do it, that’s where I hope I can be of some help.

I used to be nervous about how to propose, but it all worked out with my Love Beyond the Sea.